Control
by GoldSeven
Summary: How did Peter turn into a workaholic? Why doesn't he call his mother? How did he get Mohinder's ability? And whatever happened to the posters on his wall? Bridges the time between Fugitives and Redemption.
1. Chapter 1

**Characters**: Mostly Peter, some Hesam, Angela, Mohinder later on.

**Setup**: New season, new gaps to be filled! Until the show fills them for me, at least, rendering me AU in the process.

When Peter tells Noah he "got his old job back", that made it sound so easy. How did Peter get his old job back, and how did he get Mohinder's ability? And why isn't he talking to his mother and the guy he thinks is Nathan? My take on these questions. As canon as I can. Set between "An Invisible Thread" and "Orientation".

Reviews and comments welcome!

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**Control**

"Hi, Mr. Jackson. Yeah, you're probably surprised to see me, aren't you? I'm really sorry, but I've been away for a while – no, sorry, I couldn't have called..."

Too vague.

"Hey. Yeah, I'm back – I've been ill for a few weeks, really nasty business..."

No. Lying about something like that, in his line of work, was just dumb.

"Please, Mr. Jackson. It'll never happen again. I really need my job back – I know I should have called, that can't be helped now – give me just one more chance, okay? Being a paramedic is really everything I want to do—"

Nope. Jackson wouldn't respond to grovelling.

"Mr Jackson, I'm sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner, but I was drugged and abducted, survived a plane crash, tried to kill one of the guys who'd tried to carry me off, got shot and spent a few days on the run before I got back just in time to save the President of the United States..."

That did have a certain ring to it, but... no.

"You gettin' out, or what?"

Peter looked up abruptly. He had been so absorbed by what he was going to tell Supervisor Jackson that he hadn't noticed that the taxi was already parking outside Mercy Heights Hospital.

He paid the driver and slowly walked up to the entrance. He could have tried to explain the situation to Jackson over the phone, but he'd decided that it would be best to appear in person. He knew his chances of getting back into his old job were slim. He's just disappeared for weeks, without being able to supply any explanation. When he'd got home, he'd found that his answering machine had been full as early as the second day of his disappearance, as was his mailbox. It had taken him several rather depressing hours to get through it all, and one of the first things he'd opened was an envelope containing a note of instant dismissal.

Peter knew that Nathan could have fixed all of this with a few signatures and a phone call or two, but before he resorted to that, he'd try everything else first. Nathan had got him into this mess, but he would feel a lot better if he was actually capable of getting out of it on his own.

He kept his eyes on the ground as he trudged along the corridors towards Jackson's office, hoping he wouldn't meet anyone he knew. He'd even considered changing his appearance, just for a few minutes, but then had decided against it.

Peter felt slightly queasy by the time he knocked on the supervisor's office door. Jackson had every reason to be mad at him. Hell, the man was mad enough if you showed up three minutes late for work. He set his jaw as he heard Jackson shout "Come in!", and entered.

"Mr Jackson…," Peter began in a tone that he hoped was sufficiently apologetic without sounding too penitent, and was completely taken aback when the other man's face brightened at the sight of him.

"Ah, Peter, good to see you again!" he said in a tone Peter couldn't even remember from him. Not directed at him, at least. Something was odd here.

"Last few weeks've been totally crazy," Jackson went on, unearthing a whiteboard marker from the chaos that was his desk in remarkably short time. "I've got at least two people calling in sick every day. You're okay again? Blood test results look good?"

Peter opened his mouth to say that he had absolutely no idea what Jackson was talking about, but then decided to wait this out as long as he could. He had a feeling he know a lot less than he should here. Blood test results…? Or maybe… it was that Jackson knew a lot less than he should have.

"Yeah… fine," he said vaguely, which wasn't even a lie. He supposed.

"Good, good," Jackson said absently, walking over to the wall where the duty roster hung. "Can't have you walking around still contagious with mononucleosis. Let's see… you ready to start again on Wednesday?"

Luckily, the supervisor had his back to Peter and thus couldn't see his incredulous expression. Mononucleosis? Where the hell did that come from?

"Uh – Wednesday's fine," Peter finally remembered to reply, and immediately saw Jackson scrawling _Petrelli_ into a free slot in the early shift – next to _Malek_, Peter noted.

"So – see you on Wednesday!" Jackson dismissed him, turning to his ringing phone with a preoccupied air but a rather hearty wave at him, as waves went.

Peter managed to keep his face noncommittal until he had closed the door behind him, by which time he just couldn't repress a disbelieving headshake. He was fairly sure he knew what had happened here. As soon as he was out of the hospital's front door, he took out his cell and dialled his mother's number.

"Yes?" Angela Petrelli's voice came over the phone, a few seconds later.

"Hi, Mom, it's me." Peter was too irritated to spend much time on the required niceties. "Say – have you sent Matt Parkman around on any secret missions lately?"

There was a rather long pause at the other end, so he went on, "I've just come from the hospital, prepared to beg them to give me another chance, and learn that I had supposedly developed mononucleosis?!"

There was another pause, before Angela replied, her tone aloof, "It was your brother's idea. He thought that he'd give you some help after getting you into trouble in the first place. If you'd have been more comfortable with begging, I'm sure that could still be arranged."

"I'm not keen on begging. But the next time you… _arrange_ something for me, don't do it behind my back!"

"Did you get your job back or not?" Angela asked.

"Yeah. But I thought that was the old methods. The whole messing with people's minds, doing things behind people's backs and such?"

"Peter, we'll always have to do things behind people's backs. I believe you got a taste of what would happen if abilities became common knowledge. You and Claire objected to bagging and tagging and shooting. We're not doing anything of those."

Peter let out a long slow breath. "Yet."

Suddenly, all the progress he had thought they'd made, that evening at the Coyote Sands Café, with Nathan, Noah, his mother, and Claire, seemed to be slipping out of his grasp, and in his mind, he saw it being replaced by the old Company, or Pinehearst, whatever you liked to call it. The old methods, the old faces, the old feeling of things getting over his head. Things he had never wanted any part in.

His mother seemed to sense his growing anger, and went on, slightly more peaceably, "Peter, I can understand what you're thinking. I used to see things just like you. But I've seen a lot more since that. You know what I'm talking about. People can't be trusted."

"So what makes you the one who _can_ be trusted? Trusted to take control over other people who don't even _know_ they're being controlled? "

"Someone has to take control. Not me alone, but a group of people to ensure there's no abuse of power."

It sounded logical. It was just what they had agreed on at Coyote Sands. But there was a new twist to everything that Peter thoroughly disliked. He knew what he thought he had wanted, since that day: to be part of the controlling entity. To keep the rest of the Company heads in check, provide a balance, make sure things didn't run out of hand. Again.

But now, he realised that every fibre in him recoiled at the thought. In the light of what had just happened, there could only be two outcomes to this. He could either fight a constant war against his mother – which he might have put up with if it had been anyone else, but not with her – or he'd cave in at some point, accept the inevitable, and become one of them. Like his mother, like his father.

He'd wanted control over this new Company, but he now felt that this was something he could never control. His mother wouldn't let him. Probably not even because she wanted to, on any conscious level, but because she was Angela Petrelli. And because he was her son.

"Mom," he finally said, quietly, "I think it's best if you do this without me." Slowly, he pressed the button to kill the connection, and shut off his phone.

Hands thrust in his pockets, Peter started to walk home. He took the subway, not wanting to talk to anyone just then, not even to a cab driver.

When he arrived in his apartment, he felt alien. He suddenly seemed to see all those pictures and reminiscences hanging on the walls for the first time. They had been there for a long time. Some of them had even hung in his old room in Angela's house, before he'd moved out. It was strange to stare at the same posters that a much younger, much different Peter had once hung up on his walls in his junior year at High School, and who had put them up here again a few years later. They'd been hanging here while he graduated from nursing school, while he'd jumped off buildings, while he'd been imprisoned, stranded in Ireland, stuck in the weirdest futures and while he'd been on the run from the government.

It didn't feel right.

He got a chair from the kitchen, and started to take them off.


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

"Hey, Hesam! How's it going?"

Hesam Malek looked up from his clipboard, standing in the back of the ambulance and going through a list of things that had been restocked after the night shift. There was something guarded about his smile, Peter noted.

"Now look who's back." Hesam clicked his ballpoint pen shut and put it back into his sleeve pocket. "Looks like we're good to go. Seems Nicholas even managed to remember gassing up this time." He tucked the clipboard under his arm and jumped down, and he and Peter closed the door and went around to the driver compartment.

It was not lost on Peter that his partner seemed to carefully avoid any further mention of his long absence, which made for an uncomfortably long pause now as Hesam stored the clipboard in the glove compartment and started the engine. Normally, this would be the time to catch up on mindless chatter, but none of that would come to mind.

"Just saw that Jackson's already booked me down for a double shift today," Peter finally said, in an attempt to start a conversation.

If Hesam saw through it, he didn't let it on. "We've all been running doubles for weeks, loads of people sick," he replied. "And of course, with everyone working overtime, that's not helping things." He somehow managed to say this without sounding too accusing.

It was early morning, but the streets were already full of cars as they rolled out, though not nearly as bad as it would be once the rush hour hit. Peter liked early mornings in Manhattan. The majority of the north-south streets were still completely in shadow, but going east, the sun was so bright between the tall buildings that Peter pulled the sun visor down.

"What happened to you?" Hesam suddenly asked, taking Peter completely by surprise. He had just convinced himself that Hesam wasn't going to ask questions.

"What do you mean?" he replied, cautiously. He had a feeling the mononucleosis story wasn't going to work here.

"You were gone from that crash site without a word, you didn't show up for work the next morning. Jackson was having fits. We thought we'd seen the last of you, and then, a few days ago, Jackson suddenly was surprised that we didn't know you'd reported in sick, seemed pretty much calmed down, too. And what's happened to your face?"

"My face?" Peter repeated, and his hand went instinctively to the half-healed cuts on his cheek and forehead, reminders of the fight against Sylar. Dammit! He had remembered to hide them using the shape-shifting ability when he'd gone to talk to Jackson, but today, he had forgotten.

Hesam was looking at him across his shoulder while he drove, his expression more curious than suspicious.

Peter's mind raced as he went through similar explanation attempts as he had played through two days previously, but with Hesam, they rang even worse. Before he could answer, the Iranian gave a chuckle and turned again to the street ahead, where the traffic was backed up for several hundred metres. "If you don't want to talk about it… whatever works for Jackson is good enough for me."

"It's… complicated." Peter should have known Parkman hadn't pulled his trick on everyone at Mercy Heights. He would have done it with Jackson, who was the one who mattered, but the rest of the department would probably have been left a lot more bewildered, especially with Jackson's inexplicable change of heart. He didn't like lying to Hesam, and was glad that concealing the truth was the extent of what he'd have to resort to. He left it at that, and Hesam seemed content, at least for the time being.

In the following hours, they didn't have much more time to discuss Peter's absence in any greater detail. Peter was glad of the routine. It wasn't much less stressful or any more predictable than the last few weeks had been, but at least he knew what he had to do at any given time. And it left him no time at all to think about anything involving special abilities, the loss of them, or the Company, all of which was a welcome change.

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He was reminded of all that again that night just past ten p.m., an hour before their end of shift, when he and Hesam were called to a house fire in uptown Manhattan. The location alone would have been enough to pull Peter out of the detached professionalism he'd been adhering to all day, as it was only a couple of blocks away from the house of his parents. The worst was that they arrived before the fire department did.

This happened on occasion, depending on which units were available and reached the scene first. Usually, this meant a few minutes of agonized wait during which little could be done. Tonight, there was something to be done, which didn't make things better.

A small crowd of people had formed on the lawn of the large house, a few of whom now started towards the two paramedics jumping from the ambulance. Flames were leaking from a window in the third floor.

"A woman's jumped from the window," a man told Peter, as Hesam proceeded to tell the people to get clear. "She's badly injured, said her husband was still in there."

Peter ran after Hesam, who was already on the ground next to an elderly woman. Apparently, some of the bystanders had already dragged her further away from the window. They'd meant to get her to safety, of course, but Peter could see that they'd probably made her injuries a lot worse. A younger, fitter person might have survived the jump down from the window into the thick, artfully clipped hedges below with lighter injuries, but the woman looked barely conscious, and Peter saw at a glance that both her legs were broken. A thin trail of blood ran from her mouth down onto her fluffy pink dressing-gown. She smelled of cigarettes.

"Her husband's in there," Peter told Hesam in a low voice as he crouched beside his partner to assist him in stabilising the injured woman.

Hesam looked up at the windows. From here, it didn't look as if the fire had spread any further than the window they had already noticed; all the others were completely dark.

"Try the door," Hesam told Peter. "I can take care of her here. And you come back at once if you smell any smoke in the hall. No heroics. You get me?"

Peter gave him a grim nod, noting that Hesam had him down pretty well, and went up to the door with a sinking feeling in his stomach. The neatly mowed lawn, the well-tended hedges, and especially the size of the house all said _money_. An open front door simply didn't go with that.

He tried the latch, but predictably, it was locked. He tried everything, but couldn't shoulder open the door, or break it open – which was only to be expected as well.

Cursing under his breath, he went back across the lawn to Hesam, staring up at the windows, listening for any cries for help, but there was nothing from the house at all except for the sound of the fire.

Hesam, who had got an IV in place, had followed Peter's glance, and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket.

"Tell me you're _not_ thinking of climbing up there."

Of course he had. But even Peter had to concede that it would have been impossible. There was a trellis for roses under the windows, but it was made of thin wire, and there was no way it would support his weight. And even if it could have, there had to be a reason why the woman had chosen to jump down from there rather than trying any other escape route.

"_Peter_."

Peter tore his eyes from the burning house and looked back at Hesam.

"Peter… I know this is Manhattan, but you're not Spiderman." Hesam jerked his head towards the ambulance. "We'll intubate her, and then we'll get the board from the car and bring her in; we'll soon know if her husband will be needing us."

Peter handed him the airway kit and watched as Hesam readied the laryngoscope, while he placed his hands on the woman's throat to feel whether the tube went in the right place. He could have been a certified EMT-Paramedic by now but, thanks to Nathan, had had to break off his nurse to paramedic bridge program last June, and although he had intubated once or twice, under supervision, he was far less accomplished with it than Hesam was. Add the fact that someone with as little neck as their current patient was not a good studying object.

"I think you're in," he told Hesam as the Iranian slid the tube down.

"You think?"

"Yeah." Peter unrolled his stethoscope and listened to the woman's lungs, and to her stomach, as Hesam carefully gave the ambu-bag a squeeze. Peter could hear air passing on both sides of the lung, and none in her stomach, which was the way it was supposed to be. He gave Hesam an affirmative nod.

While they had been working, two more ambulances had arrived, which now pulled up in front of the house. Peter jumped up to get the long spine board in order to immobilize the injured woman, while Hesam remained with their patient. In the meantime, the firemen had secured the site, unrolled fire hoses and finally broke open the front door.

Two fire fighters vanished into the building, and stayed in there long enough for Peter to be sure it would have been possible to get up there five minutes before. For a second, he found himself contemplating all the abilities he had once had that would have been useful here, then he shook off those thoughts and came back to Hesam with the board.

Their patient was in a bad way. Peter wiped the man stuck in the burning house from his mind as he concentrated on the task at hand, helping Hesam to place the woman on the board, secure her head with a cervical collar, hooking her up to the monitor. She had lost consciousness, and her pulse was so feeble now that it was hard to discern. They put her in the back of the ambulance, and Peter checked the IV that his partner had administered earlier.

Hesam gave a silent curse.

"We're losing her," he told Peter, as he monitored the woman's cardiac rhythm. "We need to get her to hospital right now." He looked out of the open doors in the back towards the burning house, where firemen were milling around on the now trodden lawn. There was a lot of smoke now as the fire was being extinguished.

"There's gotta be another ambulance here soon," Peter said, squinting in order to discern anything that was going on. "They called a Priority One."

"You stay with her," Hesam decided. "I'm checking on the situation out there. Unless they're carrying her husband down this instant, we're rolling."

Peter nodded, watching the woman's weak cardiac pattern on the monitor and looking out over his shoulder once in a while. Even in here, the smoke stung in his eyes.

Then one of the firemen came briskly towards the ambulance, shaking his head and gesturing to Hesam to move out. At the same time, Peter saw the two firemen who had entered the house earlier emerge again, carrying a charred human form between them that could not possibly be alive. Peter's heart sank.

Hesam turned on the spot and ran back to the ambulance, and Peter saw him mouthing another curse as he slammed the door shut. Seconds later, he was in the driver's seat, and they were moving.

After just two minutes, their patient went flatline.

"Asystole," Peter shouted to Hesam.

"Fifteen minutes to the hospital, twelve if we're lucky," Hesam shouted back from the front. "Push a milligram of epi." His voice sounded strained as he radioed the hospital to announce that they were coming in with a working one-hundred.

Peter gave the patient an injection of epinephrine through the IV, started doing CPR, and then, two minutes later, gave her another injection of atropine. He was relieved when his efforts resulted in renewed heart activity.

"She's got a pulse back." _For now_, Peter added in his mind as he bent over their patient and watched her heart rhythm on the monitor. To his surprise, he saw that her eyes were open when he looked back at her face, and she was clutching his hand, her mouth working as she gagged feebly.

"It's all right," he soothed her, chafing her hand. Being conscious with a tube down your throat wasn't fun; he'd had some experience with that himself. The tube was breathing for her, but the sensation of a foreign object in the trachea was never comfortable.

After a while, she calmed, blinked a few times, and her hand tightened on his as she tried to speak again.

Peter leant closer, and saw her mouthing, "Hal…"

Peter bit his lower lip. He thought he knew exactly what she meant. It was the classic – going to bed, smoking a cigarette, and falling asleep. Her eyes were searching in desperation, roaming behind his face in order to see that of her husband somewhere near.

She went flatline again.

He wouldn't save her; he knew it with painful clarity. As little as he had been able to save her husband. But there remained something, one very small thing, that he could do for her.

He pushed another dose of epinephrine through the IV line, resumed CPR, and was rewarded by renewed heart activity a few seconds later. Her eyes were open a fraction. Peter didn't even know if she could see him, but he was determined to give this a try.

He looked up briefly to make sure Hesam couldn't see him in the rear-view mirror, and then looked back at the dying woman. There was a single hair on the shoulder of that ridiculously fluffy pink dressing-gown, much shorter and darker than her own hair, and Peter carefully placed his hand on her shoulder, closing his eyes as he willed himself to take the shape of a man he had never met, and never would.

"I'm here," he said quietly, his voice coming out deep and gravelly. "It's OK." His hand, someone else's, knotted with age, tightened slightly on her shoulder. There was recognition in her eyes as they closed for the last time.

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They sat in the EMT room, Hesam on the couch, Peter on a chair, with paper cups of coffee, the only available beverage. The soda machine had already been out of order when Peter had last sat here, weeks ago, and it probably would be until just before Christmas. They'd wheeled the woman into the trauma room at 10.33 PM, where the surgeons had worked her for another twenty minutes before they had called it.

Their shift was long over, the paperwork was done, the car restocked, but none of them felt inclined to go home. They weren't talking. There was no need for it.

Peter leant forward on his chair and stared into his ink-black coffee. He wasn't going to sleep anytime soon, but the coffee took just a small part of the blame.

He'd become a paramedic in order to save lives instead of watching them pass, and today, he might just as well have been a hospice nurse for all the good he had been able to do. Of course he couldn't save every life. He knew that, he'd been told a couple of times now, and he wanted to accept it. It was just that this was so hard to accept if he took into account what he had once been able to do. What had he done with his powers back then? The only person he could ever claim to have saved was Claire, who definitely needed a lot less saving than most other people. Other than her, up until the point when he had lost all his abilities to his father, he hadn't really done a lot with them. It was only after he had been rendered powerless that he had actually, actively, tried to make a difference. And now that he had at least this very limited ability, all he could do with it was to ease an old lady's passing.

No, he wasn't Spiderman.

But he knew someone who could help out in that regard. Someone who, with some luck, was still in the city.

Peter straightened, downed his coffee, and got up with a slight groan.

"Hey," he said in that ostentatious tone that often served as an unofficial announcement that there had been enough grieving for the day. "Seeya tomorrow."

Hesam gave him a tired wave and watched him as he left the room.


	3. Chapter 3

_Only __a short chapter today. But I'm planning to bring this to completion within the next week or so – to move on to my next fic, which I hope to write before Christmas. Reviews welcome! _

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**3**

It was well past midnight when Peter arrived at Isaac's loft in Reed Street.

Strange that his mind still insisted on calling it Isaac's loft, instead of Mohinder's lab, Mohinder's nesting grounds, Matt's White-House-Bomb atelier, and whatever other uses this place had been put to after the death of Isaac Mendez. But after everything that he had seen here, the memory of a dying Simone was always the first image to enter his mind whenever he stood on the railing outside the apartment.

He blinked to chase the thought away, and peered through the large windows into the dark room beyond. The blinds were half-closed, leaving only narrow strips to look through. Nothing was moving.

"Mohinder?" he asked quietly.

Everything remained quiet.

Peter knocked, causing the blinds on the other side to rattle noisily against the window. "Mohinder!"

Still there was no answer.

He knocked again, even more loudly this time. "Mohinder, are you there?"

Two doors were opened simultaneously, one ten feet down the corridor, with an angry face looking out at the source of the nightly disturbance, and the other in front of Peter, by a startled-looking Mohinder in striped pyjamas.

"What are you—" Mohinder began, then, as his neighbour started reeling off an angry tirade that sounded either well-rehearsed or often-used, he pulled Peter inside. "Come on in," he murmured. The look which he gave Peter was still full of worry. "What's happened?"

Peter suddenly felt sorry and foolish. Mohinder Suresh and he had been through so many strange encounters – together or at opposing ends – in the past that it had never occurred to him that calling at 1:15 AM might be considered strange by anyone. The sight of Mohinder had brought it home to him that other people, too, might be trying to lead normal lives, such as sleeping at night and wearing colourful pyjamas. Inasmuch as the latter could ever be considered normal, that was.

"I'm sorry." Peter cast a look around the loft; Matt's paintings were gone. The place looked tidy, almost empty. "Nothing happened. I – I guess I should have waited until morning. I need your help."

Mohinder leant against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm not helping, Peter. I told you I was out of all this until I'd come to terms with a couple of things. I thought you had understood that."

"I don't mean anything you need to help me _with_," Peter explained. "I just – need to borrow your ability." Behind the scientist, he now noticed two large suitcases standing by the door.

Mohinder's eyes narrowed. "And _that_ couldn't wait until morning?" he asked, crossly.

"Yeah, it could have. But it seems I was lucky I didn't wait. You're leaving?"

Mohinder followed his glance to the two packed suitcases. "My flight goes tomorrow, yes."

Peter drew a deep breath. "Remember what you said in Coyote Sands? You said you weren't ready to forgive yourself yet. I… sort of know how you feel. The Company? They're gonna start over with everything. The same ideas, the same mistakes."

"None of them of your doing."

"So they're not. But look at yourself. What your father did – or supposedly did – that doesn't leave you cold either, does it? Think of what my parents did. Hell, you probably knew my father better than I ever thought I did. If we're going to make amends for everything our parents got wrong, where does that leave _me_?"

"Where _does_ it leave you?" Mohinder returned the question, but unfolded his arms, his face more inquisitive now than irritated.

"Pretty much where it leaves you," Peter conceded. "Move on? I can't do that. Not yet. Somebody has to find some amount of redemption for what my family did in the name of the greater good."

Mohinder nodded. "As a paramedic."

"Yeah." Peter briefly glanced at his feet. "I failed to save two lives today. I might have been able to save both of them if I had been stronger. I became a paramedic because I wanted to help people with my powers, instead of harming them, imprisoning them, taking away their free will or any of those things. I wanted to be in control. And today, there was nothing at all I could do. I could only sit and watch them die. I don't want to go through that again. Not without trying everything else first."

"You know that, with Sylar dead, you'll probably never get that shapeshifting power again."

"I don't care. It was useful for bringing down Sylar. I don't need it anymore."

Mohinder continued to scrutinize Peter for a few more moments, then he pushed himself away from the wall with a slight smile, extending his hand to the other man. "Good luck, then, Peter. May you find redemption. I'll go and try to find some for myself."

Peter took the scientist's hand, concentrated, and felt the familiar sensation of power leaping over to him. He held Mohinder's hand for a few more seconds. "Thank you," he said at length. "I'll put it to good use."

Mohinder nodded. "I'm sure you will." He walked Peter to the door. "Try to be quiet when you leave. It's not as if it matters now, but even those of my neighbours who have only lived here for a couple of months think I'm a bit of a freak."

Peter gave him a crooked grin. "Aren't we all?"


	4. Chapter 4

**4**

When Peter was woken by his alarm clock just a few hours later, at 5.45 AM, he should by all means have been bone-tired. Instead, he was pleased to find that he was wide awake. Whether this was due to Mohinder's ability, or to the kind of giddy excitement he was feeling at the prospect of being able to truly make a difference now, the sensation was not unlike Christmas morning when you were a kid. There were new toys that Peter couldn't wait to try out.

He was aware that super strength would not be making that much of a difference for most calls. It wouldn't save a patient in cardiac arrest, and he told himself to be very, very careful the next time he did CPR. But if for nothing else, it would be helpful for carrying down five-hundred-pound patients from the eleventh floor, and being able to block a drunk's swing aimed at him wouldn't hurt either. And in those rare but taxing calls like the one last night, it could mean the difference between life and death.

Humming slightly tunelessly under his breath, he dressed, made some coffee, and then saw that he had a message on his answering machine that he hadn't checked on last night.

With a sigh, he squatted down on the floor and pushed the "play" button, hearing his mother's voice, "Peter, please call me back. I know you have some problems coming to terms with the new Company, but it's nothing we can't talk about. We're all counting on your help, Peter."

Peter deleted the message and got to his feet with a displeased grunt. "When have you ever needed my help?" he asked the phone accusingly, but predictably, received no answer.

He was on his way to the hospital by 6.30, and surreptitiously looked around himself when he turned a corner into a side alley. Of all the abilities he had ever possessed and lost again, his stint with Mohinder's had probably been the shortest. A couple of bicycles lay across the sidewalk, probably upturned by juvenile delinquents the previous night, and Peter, casting another glance over his shoulder to make sure nobody was looking, took a standing jump just to see if he could, and cleared them all without any difficulty to speak of.

Well, this one certainly worked. He'd have to be careful about who was watching, and wondered how long he could keep his ability secret from Hesam, but that was something he was going to deal with later.

He arrived well in time for the first shift, got the ambulance keys and radios, and found that Hesam looked about as tired as Peter probably should have. Apparently, Hesam had noticed that, too.

"Feeling better?" he asked Peter, and today, he did sound slightly accusatory of the fact that his partner had weathered the previous shift a lot better than he had.

"Yeah," Peter replied. "You?"

"Life's gotta go on," Hesam said, rubbing his forehead and checking the list of restocks from the car's previous call. "Do better today, huh?"

"Yeah, let's," Peter answered, and he meant it.

Peter's first opportunity to try out his new ability in action came around early afternoon that day, and in an entirely different way from what he had imagined.

He and Hesam usually had lunch in the car, and _having_ lunch was usually a lot harder than getting hold of lunch. There were enough takeaways and street vendors in New York City – and that was just counting the ones that sold edible food – to procure some sandwiches, falafel, or pizza, even if it could be difficult to actually eat. Sometimes Peter and Hesam took turns in the driver's seat just so the other one could have a go at his lunch. Today, however, some higher force kept them from even stopping at anything more elaborate than a candy machine. It was either emergencies that couldn't have waited, or traffic jams that left them stuck in the middle of nowhere. Or in the Queens Midtown Tunnel, which was even worse.

They were on their way back from a call to Queens, some three hundred feet from the tunnel entrance, and had been in the same spot for nearly half an hour. Neither of them had eaten since morning. Hesam gave a resigned sigh and jerked his head back to his jacket, which hung from the back of the driver's seat. It was a warm day, much too warm for uniform jackets. "There ought to be a packet of chips in my pocket somewhere. See if you can find it, will ya?"

Peter leant over to dig around the pockets and finally extracted a crumpled little plastic bag with even more crumpled contents. "That's marginally better than those chocolate bars from the glove compartment," he remarked. "Got a spoon?"

"Glove compartment?" Hesam said, alarmed. "Are they still in there? I thought you'd gotten rid of them ages ago."

"I did. Nicholas must have put some new ones in. Just to annoy you."

"You're kidding me. I told him to quit storing his chocolate bars in places he keeps forgetting about."

"Nope. I saw them earlier, while I was searching for a garbage bag."

"What condition are they in?"

Peter opened the glove compartment and retrieved what looked like plastic-wrapped goo. "I'd say pretty critical."

"Gah. What I wouldn't give for an Italian B.M.T. now."

Peter looked out at the congealed traffic in the tunnel ahead. "Y'know, I'll hop out and get us some."

Hesam laughed. "I'd much rather turn on the sirens. The next Subway's gotta be thirty minutes from here, on foot."

Peter cast him a sidelong glance. "Really? I bet it's no more than three."

His partner laughed again. "Whatcha gonna do, fly to 2nd Avenue?"

"Close." Peter grinned and pointed to a sign some eighty feet ahead. "I'll be back before you pass that sign."

"You better." Hesam sounded a lot less amused now. Peter knew why. If a call came while Peter wasn't in the car, there would be a lot of trouble for both of them. He couldn't know that Peter fully intended to be back in less than ten minutes.

"Chipotle Southwest, right?" he asked Hesam as he opened the door.

"You're not really, actually, going to a Subway."

Peter was still grinning as he jumped out, went back until he was sure Hesam couldn't see what he was doing, passed a recess in the tiled tunnel wall, and pulled himself up.

It was one of the more incredible things he had ever felt, and he had had a lot of incredible things happen to him in the past year. He climbed the wall effortlessly, up to the point where he hung nearly upside down, and still he knew he couldn't fall.

_Thanks, Mohinder_, he thought as he started speeding towards the tunnel entrance, trusting in the car drivers below not to look too closely at the tunnel walls above them. If it had worked for Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, it would work for him, too.

Once outside, he pulled himself up the embankment and ran on without attracting any attention, swerving around or just jumping over obstacles, careful to keep to the smaller alleys.

Hesam's eyes nearly popped out of his head as Peter was back in the ambulance a very short time later, with a brown and green paper bag in his hand. Hesam took the bag as Peter sat down, slightly out of breath, and strapped in again. The Iranian inspected the contents, still suspecting that Peter had pulled some sort of trick on him.

"Those _are_ from Subway," he finally ended his inspection, his tone incredulous.

"Told you," Peter confirmed.

"What did ya do, man?" Hesam went on. "You stopped some pedestrian and told him to hand over those subs in the service of the state, or something?"

Peter laughed. "How did you guess?"

"You would, too," Hesam muttered, unwrapping one of the sandwiches. "And that pedestrian just happened to have an Italian B.M.T. with Chipotle Southwest sauce?"

"Two, actually," Peter said, helping himself to the second. "Some luck, huh?"


	5. Chapter 5

**5**

The call came in the instant Peter was about to take the first bite from his sandwich.

Rolling his eyes heavenward, he reached out for the mike to answer it, but Hesam stopped him with a meaningful glance, biting off a demonstrative mouthful of Italian B. M. T., then took the mike, and said, "Yef?" Peter was slightly shaking with silent laughter in the passenger seat, but both men became serious in an instant when they both heard the controller's voice, "Calling all available units. MVC on East River Drive, a quarter of a mile north of the corner of E 41st and E 42nd. Several casualties, at least three injured, one car gone into the river. Repeat, all available units."

Hesam swallowed his rather sizeable chunk of sandwich whole and reported back, in a rather hoarse tone, "This is specialist unit 5-9, we're three minutes out." Peter keyed the sirens and lights as he did so, and saw the cars ahead laboriously move aside to make way.

Hesam's estimate of three minutes proved accurate, almost miraculously, because of the greater width of the tunnel compared to others of its kind, which made it possible for the ambulance to pass through the middle of the double lane of cars. They were lucky to have been so close to the entrance already. If there had been a single truck ahead, Peter thought, he'd have been forced to pull off his spider-climbing trick again.

They were the first to arrive on scene, and the sight that presented itself to them was a nightmare.

A truck going south seemed to have lost control on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, swerved through the median onto the oncoming lanes, smashing into several vehicles and causing a Mitsubishi van to crash through the low barrier into the river, in an attempt to avoid collision. The truck stood diagonally across the north-bound lanes, blocking two of them. The driver looked dazed, but not seriously injured. The same could not be said about a woman in the driver seat of a compact which, in addition to being hit nearly head-on by the truck, had also been driven into another car. Several other vehicles were damaged.

Peter saw the lights of a second ambulance as well as a police car appearing from the northern lane as he jumped from his seat with his bright orange bag across his shoulders, but the most sickening view was the rear of the Mitsubishi, slowly dropping out of sight a hundred feet downriver, as the van sank into the East River and was dragged along at four and a half miles an hour.

Peter hesitated for no more than a second. Hesam and the other ambulance could deal with the injured, and would be joined by more ambulance crews shortly. The Mitsubishi was as good as gone from sight. If he didn't get there within the next two minutes, every help for the passengers would be too late.

Hesam, naturally, caught his intention almost instantly, and dragged him back from the barrier by the arm. "Peter, are you mad?" he shouted at him. "This is the East River! Are you an Olympic swimmer or something? You can't jump down there without a rope!"

Peter devoted approximately three seconds to the possibility to run back to the ambulance, get a rope, tie it to his waist, and find some place at the barrier to tie it to, and forewent the thought.

He shook himself loose from Hesam. "I'll be fine," he said, throwing down his bag and running along the barrier until he was level with the sinking van. Then he jumped.

He hadn't expected the water to be quite as cold. The air was driven from his lungs as he plunged into the river, treading water until he surfaced again, shaking his hair out of his eyes to see where he was.

He was twenty feet from the van, of which just a small stretch of silver still showed against the muddy water. The nose was pointing down, dragged down by the motor. If anyone in there survived that day, Peter thought as he started swimming, it would just be thanks to the fact that it was a sedan, which held the air in the passenger compartment for that much longer.

Using the strong current, he swam as fast as he could, and realised that without superhuman strength, he would never even have caught up with the car, which was being pushed down the river far faster than he was. He took a deep breath and dived, forcing himself to keep his eyes open.

Even ten inches below the water level and in broad daylight, the water was so muddy that it was hard to discern much. Peter managed to grasp hold of the back door of the Mitsubishi, and tried to tear it open. To his dismay, he had completely misjudged the way the masses of water were pressing the doors shut, and that his strength resulted only in breaking off the hard plastic handle.

He now dimly saw movement at the other side of the car window, and next, a pair of hands appeared at the driver's door to his left, slamming against the window. He swam up briefly, took a deep breath, held it, and then went down again.

Peter pulled himself to the front of the van, motioned the person on the other side to stay clear, and smashed in the window with his palm. He didn't hesitate for an instant, but reached through it, grasped the handhold, and ripped it out.

Inside, he now saw the driver, a black man in his late thirties, who did not try to scramble out of the car at once, but who kept looking at the back seats. There, Peter could make out a woman that must be his wife, her face nearly pressed against the ceiling at the back of the car where there was still some air left, holding up a small boy of no more than two years, while frantically struggling with the seatbelt of a pig-tailed little girl.

Peter shook the man's arm, and pointed up, then pointed at himself and the girl. He was starting to feel the lack of oxygen as he waited for the man to get his wife out, taking the little boy from her, and pushing away from the car. Peter pulled himself into the back, drew a hasty breath of very used-up air, just before the entire compartment filled up with water, and returned his attention to the girl in the back seat.

She had not been able to get to the air bubble at the ceiling, and she was unconscious, or worse. Peter didn't even wait to check for a pulse. Instead of trying to unlock the seatbelt, he took it between both hands and ripped it apart. Then he snatched the girl from her seat with both his arms locked under her armpits, kicked open the back door, and pushed away from the car as hard as he could.

With the last remnant of air gone from it, the car had begun to sink, and Peter found that even with super strength it took an incredible effort to get clear of the pull, especially without the help of his arms. His lungs were screaming for air by the time he finally felt his face push through the surface, and he drew in huge gulps, treading water, hoisting the girl up to keep her head clear of the water.

Only then did he look around for her parents and little brother; he finally saw them a hundred feet downriver. The man was frantically trying to hold on to both his wife and son; the little boy was hysterical, and was endangering both his parents.

Peter desperately looked around for anything that floated, but there was nothing there. Finally, he shifted the little girl on his back with her arms around his neck, holding both her little wrists with one hand, and started to swim.

The woman and man had seen him, and he heard the woman shouting, "Abbie, Abbie!" as she recognized her daughter. Both she and her husband, who was now holding the thrashing little boy, made a valiant effort to battle the current and swim back to him. Even Peter was beginning to feel light-headed by the time he finally reached them.

"Is she okay?" the mother gasped at Peter.

"I d-don't know," he answered truthfully. His teeth were chattering, which seemed completely incongruous considering he had pulled melted chocolate bars from a glove compartment back in the ambulance just three-quarters of an hour ago. "She's g-got a chance." He remembered stories of a little girl who had survived seventy minutes in water, although that had been much colder water. _Let her hold on for ten_, he thought fiercely, _just ten_. Help must long be on its way. There was nothing Peter could do for the girl here, except get her to shore safely, and try to revive her.

The little boy seemed to have spent himself; he was clinging to his father's neck now, whimpering. Peter reached out to grasp hold of the man, who was in turn holding on to his wife, so they wouldn't lose each other.

"How… d-d'we get… out of the river?" he man panted, and Peter had to admire his pragmatic outlook. But he conceded that, after having been through what they just had, there was nothing left but pragmatics.

"That's tough," he answered. They were two hundred feet from the bank – or rather, from the smooth wall that lined the river in this place. He probably could have climbed it, but none of the others would, and he strongly doubted he could still carry them. Even with his new ability, his strength was still limited, and he felt he had used up most of it.

"Nearly imp-possible to climb out," he finally went on, panting. "B-but that's the Skyport Marina over there – look!"

From the brightly colourful building located on an outcropping in the river, Peter saw the most welcome thing he could have envisioned at that instant – a red-hulled coast guard vessel approaching them fast.

Minutes later, they were pulled from the water, Peter doing his best first to help placing the children in the rescue basket lowered to them, then assisting the two adults before allowing himself to be hoisted up. His legs felt like rubber as he collapsed on deck; gratefully, he accepted a blanket being passed to him and saw that a PHSCC Medical Officer was already performing CPR on the little girl, Abbie. Her mother and father, and her brother, who was sobbing more loudly again, were huddled next to that. It was a small boat; with the five people rescued from the river, the Medical Officer, and another man from the crew, the deck was already crowded.

"Mr Petrelli?"

Peter looked around to see a woman in her forties emerging from the small cabin, smiling, hand extended. "Master Chief Petty Officer Carol Hansen. Your partner back there on the FDR Drive told us what happened. That was a pretty amazing rescue for one man."

"Thanks," Peter murmured, getting to his feet and shaking her hand. "Is – the girl – Abbie – gonna be O. K.?"

"She's alive. Senior Assistant Young is doing all he can." She looked down. "We'll do something about your hand in a minute. Are you O. K. otherwise?"

"My—" Peter followed her glance to see that his hand, as well as hers now, was bloody. It took him a while to figure out that he must have cut himself when he had smashed in the car window.

"Yeah," he replied. "I'm fine."

She motioned to the colourful building on the shore. "We're going to drop you off at the Marina, the police has a couple of questions – and then they'll probably hand you over to the press. New York loves its heroes." Her smile was genuine and just a little mischievous, but Peter found the prospect somewhat daunting. He turned again to see what the Medical Officer was doing, just in time to hear him announce that his little patient was breathing. Her mother sobbed with joy, hugging her son and telling him, over and over, that everything was going to be O. K. now. Peter was in a daze, feeling like a watcher of the scene before him rather than like a participant. Still, despite the cold, despite the tiredness, there was a glowing sensation located somewhere in his stomach – the knowledge that he had, possibly for the first time, used his abilities to save lives, and not just one, but four.

The man he had pulled from the car now got unsteadily to his feet, looking around for Peter, and walked over to him. "I can't believe we all got out of that alive," he said, his voice shaky, grasping Peter's hand and clapping him on the shoulder. "Without you, my children, my wife… we'd all be dead now."

Peter gave him a weak smile. "Just doin' my job."

.

He was back at the hospital two hours later, an hour before the end of his shift, and changed into a spare uniform, but turned around when he heard a sound behind him. Hesam was standing at the door to the locker room, shaking his head. Peter wasn't sure what to make of the Iranian's stare.

"Peter, you gotta be one of the craziest sons of a bitch I've ever seen in this place," Hesam finally said, his face splitting into a broad grin as he clapped his partner on the back.

Peter grinned back, but didn't reply.

"Admit it, you just did that to leave me with all the paperwork." Hesam's smile faded. "And the cleanup. It wasn't pretty."

"I know. I'm sorry."

Hesam shook his head, as if to chase away an unwanted thought. "Never mind. That was amazing, dude. And you probably got the worse end with all those reporter people anyway. You've earned yourself a break. Hey, let's go celebrate after shift, O. K.? It's just another hour. What'ya say?"

It was a tempting thought. And yet, he couldn't.

"Jackson just signed me up for another shift," he said. "Sorry. Maybe tomorrow."

"Another shift? Can't that man give you a break after today?"

Peter shrugged. "He asked around who could take it, and I said I could."

Hesam threw him a glance that clearly said he wasn't quite right in the head.

"Correction," he said, shaking his head, "You're _the_ craziest son of a bitch I've ever seen in this place."

Peter grinned as they walked back to the ambulance, his shoes still squeaking slightly with every step.

What he didn't tell Hesam was that he wasn't sure he would be able to join the guys the next day. He knew he'd have to sleep sometime, but the idea of missing a shift he could have taken, and failing to save someone's life that only he could have saved, was unbearable.

It wasn't a narcissistic thought. At least he didn't see it that way. It was completely reasonable. Sure, it would have been nice if there had been other paramedics in the city who had superhuman abilities, but as it happened, he was the only one. Which meant that he would have to do all he could.

And make up for everything.


	6. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

"Peter, I saw the paper today. There's no way that wasn't you. Please call me back. And please call Mom. She was a lot more upset than I was to find out what you've been up to in the _New York Chronicle_, instead of hearing it from you."

Peter sighed, deleted the message on his answering machine, and went over to his bleak living-room wall. He was already in his Paramedic uniform. It was 6.10 AM.

Yesterday's newspaper lay open on the floor, showing the bold headline, "_Hero Paramedic Saves Family Of Four_."

Peter remained sitting in front of it for a couple of minutes, then he went to his desk in a corner, and rummaged through a drawer until he found a ruler. He carried it back to the paper, used it to neatly remove the article from the page, and pinned it to the wall, stepping back to scrutinize his work.

There was a lot of space on that wall.

He'd call Nathan back later.

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* * *

Thanks for reading, everyone! I really enjoyed writing this one, and hearing your thoughts on it. More stories to come!


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